The Politics of Recognition and Engagement: EU Member States Relations with Kosovo.

• Author: Ceka, Lavdrim
• Position: Book review

The Politics of Recognition and Engagement: EU Member States Relations with Kosovo

Edited by Ioannis Armakolas and James Ker-Lindsay

Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 245 pages, [euro] 59,49, ISBN: 9783030179441

The Politics of Recognition and Engagement, edited by Ioannis Arma-kolas and James Ker-Lindsay, delves into the relations of almost a third of European Union countries with Kosovo, the youngest state in Europe. Declaring its independence on February 18, 2008, Kosovo received strong support from the EU as a whole, yet when it comes to individual states the degree of recognition and level of support vary. As of August 2019, 23 out of 28 EU member countries had recognized Kosovo, while five had not.

The book is made up of eleven chapters which can be separated in four categories as per their content. The first chapter is a sort of introduction by Ker-Lindsay and Armakolas on the independence of Kosovo and the role played by the EU. It opens up the path for other chapters by categorizing the EU countries based on their recognition (or not) of Kosovo's independence and their bilateral relations with Kosovo. The second chapter by Agon Dem-jaha, a Kosovo government adviser, brings up the other side of the coin: Kosovo's attempts at legitimizing its independence and getting more recognition. Chapters 3-6 are dedicated to 'recognizing' countries and their relations with Kosovo with a focus on the United Kingdom, Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. Lastly, chapters 7-11 discuss the positions of the EU countries that do not recognize Kosovo's independence, namely Serbia, from which Kosovo declared its independence, as well as Greece, Slovakia, Romania, Cyprus and Spain.

The authors suggest that the simple binary split between recognizers and non-recognizers is more complicated than it seems at first glance. For this reason, based on the recognition or not and the level of engagement with Kosovo, they divide the EU countries into four categories: strong recognizers, weak recognizers, soft non-recognizers, and hard non-recognizers.

The UK and Germany are considered strong recognizers. Specifically, the UK as an ally of the U.S. was at the forefront of the international intervention and recognition of Kosovo's independence. Until the Brexit announcement, a lot of lobbying had been done by UK on the international stage in support of Kosovo's independence. Now dealing with its own problems, the UK has sort of forgotten that there is a Kosovo. A...